A $2 per serving cancer cure has been found by Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada yet most of the media world is silent.Since this is not a patentable drug from a major drug company with little profit potential, it has received very little coverage. The drug is dichloroacetate,that kills almost all cancers and since it is already used to treat metabolic disorders, we know it should be no problem to use it for other purposes.Doesn’t this sound like the kind of news you see on the front page of every paper?The drug also has no patent, which means it could be produced for bargain basement prices in comparison to what drug companies research and develop.

(NaturalNews) A new study by researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark found that mammograms may harm ten times as many women as they help.

The researchers examined the benefits and negative effects of seven breast cancer screening programs on 500,000 women in the United States, Canada, Scotland and Sweden. The study’s authors found that for every 2,000 women who received mammograms over a 10-year period, only one would have her life prolonged, but 10 would endure unnecessary and potentially harmful treatments.

The researchers found that although overall screening lowered breast cancer mortality by roughly 15 percent, it also increased the number of mastectomies by 20 percent and boosted the likelihood of radiation treatment.

However, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) breast screening program — which provides free mammograms for women over the age of 50 every three years — cited different statistics in defending its program. An NHS statement said the Department of Health’s advisory committee on breast cancer screening had conducted its own evaluation of the program, and found that screening prolonged the lives of five women out of every 2,000 over a 10-year period.

Julietta Patnick, director of the NHS screening programs, said in a statement that screening actually led to a reduced number of mastectomies, and that 1,400 lives were saved every year by the program. Patnick also said that the benefits of mammograms “far outweigh the risks.”

However, opponents of breast cancer screening — which can produce false positives and subject women to harmful, unnecessary treatments — argue that women are not being informed of the possible negative effects of screening.

Dr. Peter Gotzsche, director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, said a study by researchers at the center examined letters and leaflets — including ones from the NHS inviting women to undergo mammograms — were biased toward possible benefits, and made no mention of the dangers of the procedure.

Gotzsche said Patnick’s statement about screening reducing the number of mastectomies was “misleading,” and said he was “amazed” at how emotional people were when informed of the possible negative effects of breast cancer screening.

“Some people get offended if you start questioning the balance between benefits and harms,” he said. “They just don’t want it discussed. This is an awkward position. It is wrong to not inform women about the harms.”

Longtime mammogram critic Professor Michael Baum said politics were to blame for breast cancer screening not being held to the same scrutiny as breast cancer drugs. Baum also said the breast cancer treatment industry would “lose a hell of a lot of face if [the government] began questioning the value of screening.”

“The evidence is now quite clear that breast cancer screening is harming 10 times as many women as it helps,” Adams said. “It’s time to start questioning the corporatization of the breast cancer industry, and whether we should be shifting our priorities to breast cancer prevention rather than treatment with harmful chemicals.”

Want Some Cancer with that Burger? Eating Meat Linked to Bladder Cancer

No one wants cancer served up with their steak or hamburger. But that’s just what you may be getting. As NaturalNews has previously reported, numerous studies have linked meat consumption with cancer. Now comes evidence from scientists at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center that eating meat frequently, especially meat that is well done or cooked at high temperatures, significantly raises the risk of developing bladder cancer.

These research cancer findings, recently announced at the American Association for Cancer Research’s 101st Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C., indicate that heterocyclic amines (HCAs), substances formed when meat (including beef, pork, poultry and fish) is cooked at high temperatures, may be what links meat to malignancies. Earlier research found strong evidence that 17 types of HCAs contribute to cancer.

“It’s well known that meat cooked at high temperatures generates HCAs that can cause cancer,” study presenter Jie Lin, Ph.D., assistant professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Epidemiology, said in a statement to the media. “We wanted to find out if meat consumption increases the risk of developing bladder cancer and how genetic differences may play a part.” Overcooking of oil is also unhealthy.

The M.D. Anderson researchers studied 884 patients with bladder cancer and 878 people who were cancer-free. The research subjects were matched by age, gender and ethnicity and followed for about 12 years. Using a standardized questionnaire designed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the scientists documented each participant’s dietary habits. Those who ate the most red meat had about one and a half times the risk of developing bladder cancer than the research subjects who ate little or no red meat.

Beef steaks, pork chops and bacon raised bladder cancer risk the most. People who consumed a lot of well-done meat were at about twice the risk to develop bladder cancer as those who preferred rare meat. Even chicken and fish significantly upped the chances of getting cancer — but only if they were fried. The M.D. Anderson researchers also found that people with the highest estimated intake of three specific types of HCAs were more than two and a half times more likely to develop bladder cancer than those with a low intake of HCAs.

In addition, the researchers analyzed study participants’ DNA to see if there were genetic variations that would make some people particularly more likely to develop cancer if they ate red meat. The results showed that people with seven or more specific genotypes who consumed a diet full of red meat had five times the risk of bladder cancer.

“This research reinforces the relationship between diet and cancer,” lead author Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Epidemiology, said in the media statement. “These results strongly support what we suspected: people, who eat a lot of red meat, particularly well-done red meat, such as fried or barbecued, seem to have a higher likelihood of bladder cancer. This effect is compounded if they carry high unfavorable genotypes in the HCA-metabolism pathway.”

For more information:

Meat, especially if it’s well done, may increase risk of bladder cancer

Eating Meat Boosts Risk of Prostate Cancer by 40 Percent

Colon Cancer Caused by Western Diet
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Men Remain Oblivious to Cancer Risk of Processed Meat

Men eat much more processed meat than women and are less likely to know that processed meat consumption has been linked to bowel (colorectal) cancer, according to a poll conducted for the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).

“The evidence that eating processed meat increases bowel cancer risk is convincing and this is why we recommend people avoid eating it,” said the WCRF’s Rachel Thompson. “But despite the strength of the evidence, awareness levels are low and this seems to especially be the case in men. This is a concern because, as men eat roughly double the amount of processed meat as women do, they could make a bigger difference to their cancer risk by cutting down.”

The researchers found that men in the United Kingdom eat approximately 50 grams (1.8 ounces) of processed meats such as bacon, ham, salami and sausage per day. In contrast, British women eat only 24 grams of processed meat per day.

Research suggests that eating 50 grams of processed meat per day — roughly equivalent to two slices of bacon — increases a person’s risk of bowel cancer by 20 percent. Yet the WCRF poll of 2,000 adults found that only 41 percent of women and 36 percent of men were aware of this risk. Only 63 percent of respondents knew that a poor diet can increase the risk of cancer, and only 60 percent knew that being overweight also increases cancer risk.

Researchers believe that one in ten cases of bowel cancer could be averted if everyone kept their consumption to less than 70 grams per week.

“It is important to emphasize that while we recommend avoiding processed meat, this is not a question of all or nothing,” Thompson said. “If you do not want to give up processed meat altogether, you can still make a real difference to your cancer risk by cutting down from, for example, having a bacon sandwich every day to only having one a couple of times a week.”

Everything you thought you knew about food is WRONG

Alice Hart-davis
The Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:06 CDT

We think we know what to eat: less red meat and more fibre, less saturated fat and more fruit and veg, right? Wrong, according to a controversial new book by obesity researcher and nutritionist Zoe Harcombe.In The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It?Harcombe charts her meticulous journey of research into studies that underpin dietary advice – and her myth-busting conclusions are startling.

According to Zoe Harcombe, the ­obesity epidemic has less to do with our lifestyles than with what we are eating.

‘The key thing that people don’t realise is that throughout history, right until the Seventies, obesity levels never went above 2 per cent of the population in the UK,’ she says. ‘Yet by the turn of the millennium, obesity levels were 25 per cent.

‘What happened? In 1983, the government changed its diet advice. After that, if you look at the graphs, you can see obesity rates taking off like an aeroplane. You might feel it is coincidence, but to me it is blindingly obvious.

‘The older dietary advice was simple; foods based on flour and grains were ­fattening, and sweet foods were most ­fattening of all.

‘Mum and Granny told us to eat liver, eggs, sardines and to put butter on our vegetables. The new advice was “base your meals on starchy foods” – the things that we used to know made us fat (rice, pasta, potatoes and bread). That’s a U-turn.’

Myth: Starchy carbohydrates should be the main building blocks of our diet

We’ve been told that carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread and potatoes should form the bulk of what we eat. The trouble with this, says Zoe Harcombe, is that as carbs are digested, they are broken down into glucose.

This process makes your body produce insulin, in order to deal with the extra glucose. One of insulin’s main roles in the body is fat storage, so whenever you eat carbs, you are switching on your body’s fat-storing mechanism. Whatever carbs you don’t use up as energy will be quickly stored away in the body as fat.

We should get back to doing as nature intended and eat real, unprocessed food, starting with meat, fish, eggs, vegetables and salads.

Myth: Losing weight is about calories in versus calories out

‘If only it were that simple,’ says ­Harcombe. ‘People think that if they cut out 500 calories a day, they will lose 1lb a week.

‘They might at first, but then the body will recognise that it is in a state of ­starvation and turn down its systems to conserve energy.

‘So you may be putting fewer calories in, but at the same time you will be using up fewer calories to get through the day.

‘Losing weight is more a question of fat storage and fat utilisation. You need the body to move into a fat-burning mode and, to do that, you need to cut down your consumption not of calories, but of carbohydrates.’

‘If you push yourself into doing extra exercise, it will be counterproductive because you will get hungry – your body will be craving carbohydrate to replenish its lost stores.

‘If you are trying to control weight, it is so much easier to control what you put into your mouth. Not how much, but what. Then it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do by way of exercise.’

Myth: Fat is bad for us

‘Real fat is not bad for us,’ says ­Harcombe. ‘It’s man-made fats we should be demonising. Why do we have this idea that meat is full of saturated fat? In a 100g pork chop, there is 2.3g of unsaturated fat and 1.5g of saturated fat.

‘Fat is essential for every cell in the body. In Britain [according to the Family Food Survey of 2008], we are deficient in the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and E, which are responsible for healthy eyesight, bone strength, mental health, cancer and blood vessel protection and, therefore, heart health. We need to eat real fat in order for these vital vitamins to be absorbed into the body.’

Myth: Saturated fat causes heart disease

Over the past 50 years, we have accepted this as one of the basic nutritional truths. But Zoe Harcombe says: ‘No research has ever properly proved that eating ­saturated fat is associated with heart disease, let alone that it causes it.’

‘To pick a number – 5 (mmol/l) – and to say everyone should have cholesterol levels no higher than this is like declaring the average height should be 5ft 4in and not 5ft 9in and medicating everyone who doesn’t reach this meaningless number to reduce their height. It really is that horrific.

‘Ancel Keys, who studied cholesterol extensively in the Fifties, said categorically that cholesterol in food does not have any impact on cholesterol in the blood.

‘What is abnormal is the amount of ­carbohydrate we eat, especially refined carbohydrate, and this has been shown to determine triglyceride levels – the part of the cholesterol reading your GP may be most concerned about.

‘It’s the ultimate irony. We only told ­people to eat carbs because we demonised fat and, having picked the wrong villain, we are making things worse.’

Myth: We should eat more fibre

For three decades, we have crammed fibre into our bodies to help us feel full and keep our digestive systems moving. This is not a good idea, says Harcombe.

‘The advice to eat more fibre is put forward along with the theory that we need to flush out our ­digestive systems. But essential minerals are absorbed from food while it is in the intestines, so why do we want to flush everything out? Concentrate on not putting bad foods in.’

‘Five-a-day is the most well-known piece of nutritional advice,’ says ­Harcombe. ‘You’d think it was based on firm evidence of health benefit. Think again!

‘Five-a-day started as a marketing campaign by 25 fruit and veg companies and the American National Cancer Institute in 1991. There was no evidence for any cancer benefit.’

Myth: Fruit and veg are the most nutritious things to eat

Apparently not. Harcombe allows that vegetables are a great addition to the diet – if served in butter to deliver the fat-soluble vitamins they contain – but ­fructose, the fruit sugar in fruit, goes straight to the liver and is stored as fat.

Fruit is best avoided by those trying to lose weight, says Harcombe, who adds: ‘Vitamins and minerals in animal foods – meat, fish, eggs and dairy products – beat those in fruit hands down.’

Myth: Food advisory bodies give us sound, impartial advice

the organisations we turn to for advice on food are sponsored by the food industry. The British Dietetic Association (BDA), whose members have a monopoly on delivering Department of Health and NHS dietary advice, is sponsored by Danone, the yoghurt people, and Abbott Nutrition, which manufactures infant ­formula and energy bars.

The British Nutrition Foundation, founded in 1967 to ‘deliver authoritative, evidence-based information on food and nutrition in the context of health and lifestyle’, has among its ‘sustaining members’ British Sugar plc, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, J Sainsbury PLC and Kraft Foods.

‘When the food and drink industry is so actively embracing public health advice, isn’t it time to wonder how healthy that advice can be?’ says Harcombe.

Comment: For readers wishing to look more into diet and health issues, you may want to read the Diet and Health board on our forum.

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Simple cancer remedies that can give you a fighting chance

Though cancer can be seen as a very complex illness, it is important to understand that cancer is simply the “symptom” and the tip of the ice berg. For your body to allow cancer cells to take root and multiply, there had to be a weakened immune system, toxicity of many kinds and nutritional deficiencies.

Evidence-based research has shown that there are hundreds of known and effective cancer cures. Here are some very simple protocols that will give you an edge if you are afflicted with cancer.

1. Baking Soda
1 tsp. of baking soda and the juice of 1 organic lemon in 8 ounces of water several times per day is a very easy way to alkalize the body. Cancer cells can’t grow in an alkaline body.

2. Blood Root
Blood root is a perennial plant that contains a plant alkaloid called Sanguinarine. Sanguinarine kills cancer cells only and does not harm your healthy cells. It can be used internally or applied externally in a salve for superficial cancers.

3. Chaga
Chaga is a medicinal mushroom that has been studied in laboratories for many years. It has shown much promise as an immune system modulator and has many anti-cancer properties.

5. Essiac Tea
The original formulation of this tea was actually an old Native Indian recipe that had been used for hundreds of years. A Canadian nurse learned about it and started sharing it with some of her cancer patients and she began to see amazing recoveries. The tea, comprised of several anti-cancer and cleansing herbs, can be consumed several times per day.

6. Flax Seeds and cottage cheese
Dr. Johanna Budwig, a German biochemist and physicist, is credited for this healing concoction that has seen a 90 percent success rate spanning over 50 years. The combination of these two foods provides essential fatty acids and lipoproteins that reduce tumors and restore health.

7. Hemp Oil
The cannabinoids in hemp kill cancer cells. Period. And like all other herbal remedies, the plant chemicals do not harm healthy cells. There have been numerous studies conducted with reported beneficial effects on many types of cancers, including breast cancer.

8. Iodine
It is estimated that over 85 percent of the world’s population is iodine deficient. Since estrogen production increases with iodine deficiency, make sure you have your iodine levels tested every year.

9. Melatonin
Melatonin is a powerful breast cancer cell inhibitor. In fact, in laboratory studies, it actually put breast cancer cells to sleep and slowed down the growth by 70percent. Melatonin also counteracts the effects of environmental estrogens.

10. Broccoli Sprouts
While cruciferous vegetables in general have been promoted for their anti-cancer properties, broccoli sprouts are up to 100 times more potent. The sprouts contain Sulforaphane which not only kills cancer cells, but actually suppresses the growth and spread of many types of cancers.

There are literally hundreds of known cancer cures that have saved countless lives. Of course, healing cancer involves healing the body as a whole. Lifestyle and dietary changes are also essential since cancer is just the symptom and NOT the cause. If you know anyone who is afflicted with cancer, please share this information and be a messenger of hope.

So where is the public outcry warning Americans, who are always in search of newer and better drugs anyway, off these lucrative yet carcinogenic vehicles for addictive substances like caffeine, sugar and perhaps worse? They are likely hiding, at least for now, from an industry loathe to let cold-hearted science and much-needed reason lead the way.

“When it comes to studies of soda consumption and chronic disease risk, the only superior alternative to a prospective cohort study would be to conduct a randomized, controlled trial, where you assign one group to drink high amounts soda over 20 years, and the other group to not consume soda,” senior researcher Isabel Drake, who led Lund University’s soda cancer study, told AlterNet. “This, of course, is unethical and never going to be feasible. There are situations like this one, to assess for causal associations between soda consumption and cancer or other chronic diseases, where observational studies are realistically the best study design to address causal associations.”

You’ll notice that nowhere in that short history lesson did you hear anything about health and wellness. That’s because sodas have zero redeeming nutritional value.

But they have had lethal additives like 4-methylimidazole, the ammonia-sulfite caramel coloring that is also a known animal carcinogen. The flavorless die brought nothing to products like Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and more that carried it, and was toxic enough to activate a new California law requiring disclosure of cancer risk — which, in turn, was enough to motivate Coke and Pepsi to quickly discard it while protesting the controversy as “scientifically unfounded.” An appeal to the FDA for ban from the Center for Science in the Public Interest likely helped. But 4-methylimidazole is just one soda headache among many.

“Caramel is one concern that the industry is in the process of largely solving,” CSPI co-founder and executive director Michael F. Jacobson told AlterNet. “Also, we have concerns about aspartame, acesulfame-potassium and saccharin, which is rarely used in drinks.”

Lund’s study is the latest in a roll-call of soda cancer flags. Drake and colleagues followed 8,000 men aged 45-73 for an average of 15 years, and found that 40 percent of those who downed barely 12 ounces of soda a day were likely to contract a disease that kills a million of them a year. Previous research has warned of increased risk of esophageal cancer. University of Minnesota School of Public Health professor of epidemiology Mark Pereira recently led a study finding that 87 percent of his over 60,000 test subjects were likely to develop pancreatic cancer, whose median survival for 80 percent of afflicted individuals hovers between six to 10 months. The soda cancer warning signs continue to siren.

“The important take away from our study is that habitual consumption of soft drinks may be linked to an increased risk of pancreatic cancer,” Noel Mueller, University of Minnesota School of Public Health Ph.D. student and first author on Pereira’s study, told AlterNet. “In response to any criticisms, I’d like to point out that our results align with a recent Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health meta-analysis of studies on this topic, including ours, which found that soft drink consumption was indeed positively associated with pancreatic cancer risk.”

The soda cancer warning signs continue to siren.

It’s no wonder that fear of a California may-cause-cancer label was enough to motivate soda multinationals into comparatively lightspeed removal of their called-out carcinogens.

Exploiting causal opportunities like these to bring soda multinationals to heel for their obvious cancer threats is crucial. But good luck finding enlightenment on soda and cancer at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or its National Cancer Institute (NCI). A NCI spokesperson told AlterNetthat he’s “pretty sure” they have no conclusive research on the matter. “We have no fact sheet on soda on cancer,” he said.

The NCI does have a factsheet on Diet and Nutrition that sheds light on other areas like artificial sweeteners, fluoridated water and cruciferous vegetables. But most compelling is the NCI’s facstsheet on cancer and obesity, which it warns is associated with increased risk of cancers of the esophagus, breast, endometrium, colon, rectum, kidney, pancreas, thyroid, gallbladder… “and possibly other[s].” The NCI also notes that obesity comes complete with a higher risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a number of other chronic diseases, all for an “markedly” increased share of Americans consuming themselves to death.

But the indispensable link missing from that causal chain is the obvious link between soda and obesity. It’s not rocket science: If soda is a major obesity threat, and obesity is a major cancer threat, then soda is a major cancer threat.

Like soda and cancer, soda and obesity used to be a hot-button issue. That is, until enough time, science and activism passed. But as one can tell by high-profile blowback from Michael Bloomberg, who banned sales of large sodas while calling it the “single biggest step any city has ever taken” to “curb obesity,” or Michelle Obama, who called obesity America’s “number one greatest national security threat,” administering global policy these days on soda and obesity is no longer political suicide. It’s a shared reality received at last from power players who champion initiatives with motivational grabbers like “Let’s Move!”

This is perhaps why a spokesperson for the American Medical Association responded to AlterNet’s questions about soda and cancer with a reminder of its positions on soda and obesity, which like autism and other medical spectrums shelter less processable truths.

“Causal inference is the holy grail of epidemiology,” Mueller said.

“You make a good argument that the causal link between soda and obesity, and obesity and cancer, could potentially be enough to establish causality,” Drake told AlterNet. “Because of the direct link between diet and obesity, obesity is of course an easier sell.”

Jacobson agreed. “Probably by far the biggest risk is due to the fact that drinking too much soda promotes obesity, and obesity promotes several types of cancer,” he told AlterNet. “Coffee, decaf, tea, seltzer, flavored waters and water are certainly safer than liquid candy.”

“Since cancer is affected by other environmental factors, and to a much greater extent genetic factors, there is probably not enough evidence to say there is a direct causal link, but potentially enough evidence to say that a poor diet increases risk of disease,” said Drake.

“It’s premature to say whether obesity may be on the causal pathway between soda and pancreatic cancer,” Mueller dissented. “However, in my mind, despite the theoretical shortcomings for causality, there is a strong enough case to be made that sugar-sweetened beverages offer no redeeming nutritional qualities and, as such, there is a policy case to be made that their consumption, in excess, should be limited.”

But these seem like semantic scientific arguments. The druggists and other whitecoats who created sodas, as well as the power suits who capitalize on their formidable market in industry and government, can mount infinitely regressive causality arguments until their nest eggs are well feathered by soda cancer’s complexities. But the hyperconsuming public they’ve encouraged will inevitably wake to a day when those same parties, who once told them it was just fine to drink Cokes to teach the world to sing, are instead saying they should worry about having only months to live, because they drank too many Cokes a day to teach the world to sing.

“With all usual scientific caution being said, since we do not have the possibility to perform randomized clinical trials investigating the long-term impact of soda consumption, we do have to rely on the evidence at hand,” Drake added. “And given that it can be stated with certainty that there are no health benefits with drinking soda — in fact, evidence suggest negative impact on health — public health measures should be taken, perhaps to a much greater extent than they are today, to limit consumption.”

In other words, until both its pushers and users acquiesce to new economic and political normals, soda is to be known as a side route to cancer.

Until then, the soda industry plans on cashing as many checks as it takes to keep its product on the tip of your tongue. Or issuing them, in the case of pop diva Beyonce, who scored $50 million large to hawk Pepsi to her image-conscious base. That industry chess move might not be worth the money: With increasingly lethal public health risk comes slipping soda sales and changing demographics and tastes. Youth addicts who once turned to tankers of sodas are turning to coffee for caffeine and sugar fixes, or even back to water to purify their bodies and consciences.

All of this makes soda a 20th century commodity on inevitable life support in our still-new millennium. Let’s drink to that.

About the author

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.